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FUTURE_STUDIES

                                             March 23, 2023

On a recent trip to Portland-- the first in a long while--
I of course stopped in at Powell's books.  A glance at the
map and the long list of sections indicated a need for
strategy:  I went up to the information desk, and asked       SYSTEM_ERROR
in which section they had "System Error" (2021).

The major section was "Sociology", the
sub-section (of which they have too
many to put on the store map) was
called "Future Studies".                   "Future Studies" used to be called
                                           "Futurism", back in the days when
I combed though the shelves, looking       the very idea of future change
for promising volumes, and settled on      seemed new...  or rather suddenly
three:                                     respectable outside the pages of SF.

  "Noise" (2021)
  "A Flaw in Human Judgement"

   by:                                                     KAHNEMAN

   Daniel Kahneman
   Oliver Sibony
   Cass R. Sunstein

      A Daniel Kahneman book I hadn't
      heard was out: a, uh, no-brainer.

      Interesting he's teamed up with
      Mr. Nudge, Cass R. Sunstein                  NUDGE

  "2030" (2020)
  "How today's Biggest Trends Will Collide
   and Reshape the Future of Everything."
   by Mauro F. Guillén



      Flipping through this book, it may have seemed
      excessively optimistic, but didn't look dumb
      (I may have been excessively optimistic myself)    GUILLEN_2030
      and the claim that he was going to look at the
      way different trends interact was interesting.


   "Radical Technologies" (2017)
    "The Design of Everyday Life"

    Adam Greenfield

       I can't remember why this one made the
       cut-- It's from five years back, and stale    At least until it becomes
       futurism can get old...                       vintage and tells you
                                                     something about the
                                                     history of the future.


I also listed a number of runners-up to
possibly examine later (and to be nice I
might do an on-line order from Powells for                 (Jeff Bezos has not
them, rather than my usual bn.com):                        become one of the
                                                           world's richest men
                                                           with my help.)

  "Mental Immunity", Andy Norman

  "Geography of Thought", Richard E. Nisbett

  "Factfulness", Hans Rosling

  "Breaking the Social Media Prison", Chris Bail

  "Human Frontiers", Michael Bhaskar

  "The Artificial Intelligence Contagion", Barnhizer

  "Networks in the Global Village", Barry Wellman, ed.

  "Re-Engineering Humanity", Frishmann & Selinger

  "Hive Mind", Cavanagh

  "Data Driven", Karen Levy
  "Truckers surviving digital surveillance"


From other areas:

  "Version Control" by Dexter Palmer
  (a science fiction novel)



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